Wednesday, October 26, 2011

Window or Aisle?

What type of flyer are you? Are you a window person or an aisle person? I have recently had occasion to travel in an airplane. I booked my ticket and selected my aisle seat. It caused me to wonder. Does anyone ever deliberately book the middle seat? Are there travellers who say " I´d better hurry and book my seat lest I lose out on a chance at the centre." or " I´m travelling alone and I sure hope there´s still a seat available in between two strangers."

To me, the middle is the default seat. It´s the seat where a family puts their kid. It´s the seat where the wife of a couple often sits...her spouse, being either a window or an aisle person. It´s the seat that you get if the aircraft is full and you have not prebooked.

I assume that window people enjoy the view which of course consists mainly of clouds and darkness. They are obviously not too shy to request that a stranger undo his headsets, seatbelts and other paraphernalia. Then go ahead and balance their snacks precariously and fold up trays in order to allow the window person, to visit the facilities.

Aisle people on the other hand, tolerate being rammed by carts, whether they be of the  food, duty free, drink or garbage variety. They particularly like it when someone squeezes between their seat and the cart, pulling whatever loose clothing item they are wearing half way up the airplane, only to allow it to shoot back, mishapen, seconds later.

I am an aisle person. My reasons include the following:
     Firstly, an innate need for freedom and not wanting to feel captive between a person and a wall.
     Secondly, being able to visit the tiny toilet at will without having to climb over strangers or ask them to do any of the above mentioned things.
     Finally and most importantly, "FEAR"! I have the crazy notion that were something to happen, I´d be one of the first to follow those lighted aisle floor strips whilst attached to the oxygen mask and wearing my not yet inflated life vest.

I hate looking outside. I do not want to know how far from the ground I am. What is it about window people that they need to share this information?  They would shout things like "Look...the Grand Canyon", and I would of course pretend to be asleep, all the while imagining the now much greater distance between the plane and the ground.

So, recently,  as I flew by myself, I lucked out. Nobody had prebooked the middle seat. Shocking! There was an empty space between me and the window person. As I observed him, I learned that some window people have no interest in the view. In fact, he was engrossed in paper work during the whole trip. Some people do not need to budge from their seat...perhaps that´s why he selected the window...not to be disturbed by the aisle person, me, who needed to get up 3 or 4 times during the eight hour flight.

So, what are you? Window person, aisle person OR  are you one of the people who sits in the highly covetted centre seat, willingly or not?

1 comment:

  1. I have actually never been on an airplane before, so have no idea what kind of person I am. I have a feeling that when I do actually venture on the airplane, I will be in the middle. My hubby is definitely an isle kind of person, so I will be the wife in teh middle. Hopefully the person on the other side is an underwear model or something ;)

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